Posts Tagged ‘guardian’

How much does Manchester United’s Paul Pogba earn? This is not to shame ‘Old Pogba’, as the BBC dubs him, to cast him as a footballing mercenary, a barb former Arsenal defender Martin Keown has aimed at Alexis Sanchez as the Chilean prepares to leave Arsenal for a £450,000-week deal at Manchester United.

The vast majority of us work for the money. Footballers should be no different. Although some of us want footballers to be role models for the slack-jawed masses, which is why the Guardian has made Juan Mata its footballer of the year. The Manchester United midfielder heads the Common Goal project, in which players and managers donate 1% of their salary to charity. Good for him and the recipients of his generosity, but relegating an athlete’s ability with the ball to somewhere below their morals is unhelpful to anyone who sees football as a fun leisure pursuit. Does journalism award prizes to commentators and editors on the strength of how many charities they give to? Do newspapers publish staff earnings in league tables and link wage packets to their owner’s net worth? The maximum fee for professional footballers was scrapped in the 1960s. The current obsession with footballer’s earnings and spending power looks a lot like snobbish disdain.

Young man from working-class background buys house!

And in the rush to sneer at footballers, facts are manipulated to suit the narrative. When Pogba signed for United on 2016, the Daily Mail stated his wage at £290,000-per week. Today the Mirror reports that Pogba earns £200,000-a-week. That’s quite some difference. And theExpress says Pogba wants his wage”doubled” to match the “£500,000-a-week” Sanchez is set to earn.

Pogba’s basic salary is £165,000 a week, says the BBC. But his 41-page contract contains substantial incentives to earn more.

Will United give Pogba such a massive raise because his agent senses an opportunity? You wouldn’t bet against it. If the club are desperate enough to pay Sanchez a massive wage and in so doing risk destabilising the team – the reason Pep Guardiola gave for Manchester City pulling out of any deal for Sanchez – they’ll pay through the nose to keep their main marketing asset happy. Good for them. The rest of us should all agree on one thing: everyone should be on huge wages.

More women are killed by men than are killed by women. Also, more men are killed by men than are killed by women. The Guardian interprets the facts and declares: “‘Shocking’ toll of women killed by men renews call for safe spaces.”

Are prisons safe spaces; don’t they make society a safer place? The paper relays research by Women’s Aid, telling readers:

Of the 113 women killed by men in England, Wales and Northern Ireland last year, 85 died in their homes, according to the Femicide Census, an annual analysis by the charity Women’s Aid.

How many men died in their homes, victims of violence is not stated. But we are told that nine in 10 women killed during 2016 died at the hands of someone they knew – 78 by a man they’d been intimate with; three by their sons; five by another man in the family; nine by a stranger. Domestic violence is horrendous. And getting a clear picture of it is no easy thing. Killing is the indelible and baldest proof it happened. But what about other crimes behind closed doors? Questions need to be asked about the police’s early response to claims of domestic violence. Are police able to intervene when actual violence has occurred, or are they expected to spend time and resources wondering if it might, policing the trials and tribulations of domestic life?

“More needs to be done to address men’s fatal violence against women, as once again the Femicide Census reveals fatalities not as isolated incidents but as part of a repeated pattern of male violence against women,” says Katie Ghose, chief executive of Women’s Aid.

“Without a safe space to escape to, more women will be killed by men that they know,” Ghose adds. “The government must act now. Refuges are a vital lifeline, not an optional extra; they are not just a bed for a night but essential for women and their children to safely escape domestic abuse and rebuild their lives away from the perpetrator.”

But this goes beyond domestic violence. We are being asked to look at men as innately violent, to see different inherent characteristics of men and women. Sex, they say, determines your character and personality. Men present a risk to women.

Home Office figures reveal that on average, 100 women a year and around 30 men a year are killed within a domestic abuse context. Women are almost exclusively killed by men whereas in contrast approximately one third of the men are killed by other men and a little under a third are killed by women against whom they have a documented history of abuse.

Karen Ingala Smith, chief executive of the charity, nia, which campaigns to end violence against women and children, is quoted in the paper. “Men’s fatal violence against women extends beyond their partners and families,” she says. And you could say, ‘Men’s violence against men extends beyond their partners and families.’

The problem is that if it’s all about sex – women seen as weak and men as suspects, each one of them a criminal-in-waiting – we are reduced. Refuges for victims of domestic crime can be vital, but let’s not treat all human relationships with suspicion.

Have you boycotted Paperchase, sellers of printed stationery – yep, people really do still send letters (though not to Daily Mail readers who communicate by holding their noses and yelling into the wind)? Hope not. Paperchase tried its best to shine a light into society’s darkest recess. It reached out to the DailyMail’s Untermensch readership, hoping that in offering them two free rolls of Christmas wrapping paper, they’d be put on the path to decency.

Paperchase – not fan of Brexit

But Stop Funding Hate thought Mail readers beyond salvation and bombarded Paperchase’s social media account with complaints. Paperchase didn’t rescind the offer, but did vow never again to reach down into the sewer. It was “truly sorry”. Some people are just not worth the effort. Wrapping paper is a not a right; it’s a moral choice. The tree gods gladly give up their own to wrap useful gifts like photos of Jeremy Corbyn, DVDs of The 100 Best Silences and the Pop-Up Book of Safe Spaces. But save for the odd Japanese knot weed and leylandii, no vegetation wants to be seen dead around the kind of stuff Mail readers buy at Christmas – jackboots, flaming torches and Jeremy Clarkson audio tapes.

Sarah Baxter tells Times readers Stop Funding Hate is interested in muzzling the Press. The group’s founder, Richard Wilson, ‘admitted on Newsnight that “the end point for us is a media that does the job we all want it to”.’ Which is? Baxter says it’s “suppressing the array of opinion reflected in the British press… Stop Funding Hate, however, has morphed into an arrogant group of hate-mongering activists who are outraged about an ever-expanding range of subjects”.

The idea is simple: starve the publication you don’t like of advertising money and watch it die. If this also deprives thick-as-custard people of reading the tabloids, all to the good. If those mouth-breathers can’t be banned from sharing views of the right-minded, their reading material must be censored. The caring Left knows best.

The Advertising Association is concerned, stating: “The UK has a free press and advertising plays a vital role in funding that. Pressure group lobbying of this kind has negative implications for our press freedom.” Advertising body Isba, warns: “We shouldn’t take for granted the freedom of the press.”

Over in the Guardian, which would surely be the only newspaper on the bottom shelf when the anti-haters have won the day, Peter Peston thunders:

Stop Funding Hate may legitimately urge Mail readers to quit (and Mail readers may, equally legitimately, examine the causes SFH espouses and make up their own minds). But trolling rather nervous companies such as Paperchase isn’t legitimate. It’s the thin end of a dangerous wedge – with no winners in sight, from left or right.

As last week’s Ipso complaints ruling on Trevor Kavanagh’s “The Muslim Problem” column for the Sun mordantly observes: “There is no clause in the editors’ code which prohibits publication of offensive content”. Nor should there be.

In the same paper, Stewart Lee writes beneath the headline: “My futile attempt to sell satire to the Daily Mail.” Well, the paper does employ the sublime Craig Brown, so maybe he’s enough? Guardian readers are told:

Usually, I am the sort of person who thinks that anyone who has ever worked for the Daily Mail is worse than Adolf Hitler, even the temps and the tea lady. And I’m not alone. So disgusted are youth voters by the repellent newspaper, it’s now clear that the Daily Mail’s increasingly hysterical attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the coddled egg of British politics, may even have helped secure his triumphant loss in the last general election.

Worse than Hitler? Satire, right? Phew! And people not voting for Corbyn because the Mail told them, too? I thought it was about anti-Semitism. But, then, I’ve not been keeping up with the Guardian’s news on Jews and Jezza’ Labour Party, not since one of their columnists wrote in the Guardian: “I have developed a habit when confronted by letters to the editor in support of the Israeli government to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it.”

I didn’t call for a boycott. And the sport pages are good. Boycotts are, after all, for censors and Nazis.

Lee also turns to the subject of Nazis, riffing on when the Mail hailed the blackshirts.

And a sepia-toned card of the first Viscount Rothermere, the paper’s 1930s proprietor, declares, in Daily Mail font, “I urge all British young men and women to study the Nazi regime in Germany. There is a clamorous campaign of denunciation against ‘Nazi atrocities’ which consist merely of a few isolated acts of violence, but which have been generalised, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny. Congratulations on passing your driving test.”

Haha. Got one about the Guardianopposing the creation of the National Health Service as it feared the state provision of healthcare would “eliminate selective elimination”?

This is not to defend the Mail. It’s to highlight how censorship is formed by bigotry.

Owen Jones disagrees. He writes in the Guardian: “Paperchase rejecting the Daily Mail is another victory against hatred.” No, he’s not being ironic.

This paper, whose less than glorious history includes cheerleading for the Nazis and Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts, is one of the most vindictive bullies in Britain.

And the Guardian? The Spectator tells us that not all leading figures in the Left, including eugenicist George Bernard Shaw, minded tyranny. ( In March 1933 Shaw was a co-signatory to a letter in The Manchester Guardian protesting at the continuing misrepresentation of Soviet achievements: “No lie is too fantastic, no slander is too stale … for employment by the more reckless elements of the British press.”)

Malcolm Muggeridge, was initially supportive of the Soviet regime. But then he went to Moscow as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian and learned about the Ukrainian famine. The Guardian censored his reports. The left was divided by the atrocities of the Soviet Union into honest, moral people and those who turned a blind eye.

Is this a row between newspapers: the Guardian in need of the Mail to showcase what it is not; the Mail and right-wing Press, doing much the same? The difference is, though, that only one side supports censorship.

You watching the big fight between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather? You’d best not miss the beginning because it could be quick. Boxing is a sport. And Mayweather’s a lot better at it than MacGregor.

Or as the Guardian puts it:

Conor McGregor’s biggest weapon? His lack of boxing experience

No. It isn’t. As anyone who has ever stepped into a ring with a professional boxer will confirm, not being a boxer with a track record is a big disadvantage. Even Rocky lost.

The allure of Saturday’s much-hyped fight in Las Vegas is that no one knows what will happen in the ring – not least the overwhelming favorite, Floyd Mayweather

Carnage in Barcelona. Islamists have driven a truck into the city centre, murdering 13 and injuring 100 more. #punchanislamist is NOT trending on twitter, as #punchanazi has done. Barely a week has passed since a woman was killed by a nutcase at a far-Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Those gaggle of losers look like amateurs compared to Islamists.

The newspapers report on the horror. Do they mention Islamists at all? And know that Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the slaughter.

The Star spots “terrorists in a speeding white van” marauding down Las Ramblas. The Mirror says a “van was driven into crowds”. The “terrorist driving a van” ran into anyone in his path.

Both newspaper lead with a photo of Maghrebi Driss Oukabir, the Moroccan-born man suspected of hiring the van. He says his ID was stolen. He says he’s innocent. But Spanish police handed out his photo, and the media pepper his face over the papers.

The Star’s story makes not a single mention of Islamists. Odd, indeed, for a newspaper that once supporting he anti-Muslim EDL to leave religion out of it.

The Sun leads with “BARCELONA BASTARDS”. Again we seen Oukabir, now under arrest. We’re told the killer was a “maniac driver”. Was he an Islamist? The paper does not say. But we do hear over two pages about Driss Oukabir is a “fan of dope, rap & booze”. Well, that’s what it says on his Facebook Page, where his likes include Durex condoms, Heineken larger, marijuana, hip-hop and “several Islamist pages”.

As Durex and Heineken’s PRs wonder if all publicity is good publicity. we learn that Oukabir might have handed himself into the police. He’s innocent, then? No, says Piers Morgan, paragon of virtue, he’s a “snivelling, pathetic, loathsome, deluded cowardly little prick”. And presumed innocent, right?

Oukabir’s there again on the Express’s cover. It’s an old photo of the suspect from a past run-on with the police. Not much more on him is reported.

But the Times says Oukabir’s “identity documents were believed to have been used to rent” the van used in the attack. We learn that Oukabir walked into a police station in Ripoli, north of Barcelona, and said his papers had been stolen by his 18-year-old brother Moussa, who lives in Barcelona. Oukabir did hand himself in. We also learn that Oukabir likes Prison Break, the song AK47 by the Albanian rapper Noizy and has 725 friends on Facebook. None of them have been rounded up nor abused by Piers Morgan – yet.

Only the Times makes “Islamists” the main thrust of its report, leading with “EVIL strikes again – Islamists mows down innocents in Barcelona.” You wonder why the other papers don’t?

Compare that to the Guardian, which begins: “Thirteen people were killed and at least 50 injured after a van rammed into a crowded street…” A van did it? “At around 5pm a large white Fiat van veered off the road… ploughing its way through the crowd…” It ended “by a colourful mosaic by the artist Joan Miro. It was here that the van, with its front bumper smashed up, came to a halt.” Words on the driver come there none. But the magic, driverless van’s on the mend.

Arsenal’s 2-0 win over Manchester United is hailed in the Press. But before a look at the back pages, a word from Sachin Nakrani‏, the Guardian’s sports features editor. He’s at the office:

Sub editor 1: “They’re chanting ‘Fuck off Mourinho’ at the Emirates”

Sub editor 2: “Which end?”

Highlight of my day, that.

And that’s Jose Mourinho, isn’t it. He’s the brattish kid on tennis camp, a little shorter than most but he’s carrying the oversized racket and always has a can of new balls. In Jose’s monocular vision, Arsenal did not beat Manchester United. Manchester United let Arsenal win, gamely allowing the Gunners to score all the game’s goals and end United’s 25-match unbeaten run. And – boy – what roller coaster of thrills that’s been right.

Having been beaten, Mourinho “sarcastically disparaged the importance of his first competitive defeat to Arsène Wenger” (Times) . Hesaid:

“I left Highbury and they were crying, I left Emirates and they were crying. Finally today they sing, they swing the scarves. It’s nice for them… It is the first time I leave and they are happy. Before they were walking the streets with their heads low. The Arsenal fans are happy and I am happy for them.”

And on he goes:

“Do not think I am happy they are not winning trophies. Arsène Wenger is a big manager so my record [not previously losing a Premier League game to him] is not normal. Normal is win, lose, draw. I really don’t care about it today. We shook hands and during the game I don’t like what I never like. He puts too much pressure on the fourth official.”

Alex Hess tweets:

Helluva job Mourinho’s done with history’s most expensive squad: won twice vs top six, fewer goals than Bournemouth, will finish 5th or 6th.

Manchester United are at risk of triggering a financial penalty in their £750m kit deal with Adidas should they fail to qualify for this season’s Champions League.

United will suffer a 30 per cent cut to their annual £75m payment from the German sportswear giant if they finish outside of the top four. This means the club will lose more than £20m in sponsorship income.

Transfer balls: Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has seen enough of Karim Benzema. He wants one of Arsenal, Chelsea or Paris Saint-Germain to buy the Frenchman. Well, so say “reports from Spain” (Guardian). Which reports we’re not told. We could only find one. And it contains not a single quote or fact to support the story.

Wenger responds to Benzema rumours
The Arsenal manager was asked this morning why he is so often linked with a move for Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema. He responded: “Because he is French?”

Cryptic stuff from Arsene.

Not cryptic at all. Just factual.

As for the root of this story, we turn to Diario Gol, the single source, which reports via the wonders of automated internet translation:

Florentino Perez places a Real Madrid crack in the showcase 24 hours after falling in the Copa del Rey

Calling Benzema a “crack” is a bit off. What else?

The president puts foot and a half of a footballer in the street…

And then:

The footballer is unofficially on sale, but the phone is already on fire. The first offers were soon to arrive.

From who?

The season was not good for the player. The patience of Florentino ended with the elimination of the team Zinedine Zidane at the hands of Celtic in the Cup .

Much more was expected of the striker. Give the team what is claimed. But he disappeared. It was a drag rather than a help and the leader got tired of the situation.

In addition, Cristiano Ronaldo occupy the position of ‘9’ uro sooner or later, and the club does not want the overbooking in the position of striker cause a problem to the team. And it is clear that in the Santiago Bernabeu prefer to stay with CR7 .

But who wants ‘le crack”? Who made an offer for him?

The Paris Saint Germain is the best club positioned to gain the services of Karim Benzema for next season. The white president stepped up negotiations with the French entity. It is one of the few that could take over his card and at the same time pay a transfer.

Next season PSG might want him. So why is this news in the current transfer window?

But PSG is the eternal rival Olympique of Lyon in Ligue 1 , the computer on which the French became a global crack. Respect for his followers could put an end to the transfer.

So Florentino opened other ways. Arsenal and Chelsea are the candidates. If the operation with the Parisian team is not successful, the president already has the alternative. Be that as it may, Karim can not continue in Real Madrid.

Put that utter balls through the Daily Mirror’s Transfer Balls Translator and you get:”Karim Benzema offered to Arsenal and Chelsea?”

That question mark fails to show up on Google News. So the story of a player on his way out of Spain and most likely returning to France is all about Arsenal and Chelsea.

Donald Trump’s presidency is causing one Guardian writer to come over all anti-democratic.

I turned off the radio after Obama said, in his final speech: “In 10 days, the world will witness a hallmark of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power from one freely elected president to the next.” I yearned for a leader who would say something like: “Hey, there was foreign intervention in this election, along with voter disenfranchisement, so maybe it wasn’t free and fair.”

You might recall when Barack Obama popped over to the UK to tell Britishers how voting for Brexit would relegate the country to the “back of the queue”? As Henry Kissinger put it: “Obama seems to think of himself not as part of a political process, but as sui generis, a unique phenomenon with a unique capacity.”

The Guardian writer adds:

We didn’t need to know the minutiae of the Russian intervention; we already knew that it raised questions so grave that the whole transfer of power should have been halted while it was investigated.

So is democracy not free and fair when it delivers the result you don’t want?

Only one tabloid leads with Donald Trump’ inauguration. The Mirror introduces the 45th President of the United States. “Now the world holds its breath,” it adds. Over pages 4 and 5 readers are told “IT COULD ALL GO VERY BADLY WRONG.” The paper produces a listicle: “20 reasons why Trump’s reign could be a disaster for USA & World.”

Across the page, we see a picture of the Obamas sharing a hug as they gaze out from the White House. The message is clear: the good times are over. The good people are gone.

Under Obama, the US facilitated around 2.5million deportations. A record.

This is not to undermine Obama’s achievements and record. As the New York Times reports, Obama pulled “the nation back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression”. This is to highlight monocular reporting of a man whose wife billed him as “a leader who’s going to touch our souls”.

Lest any reader not have got the Mirror’s point, its editorial thunders, “Reasons to be fearful.” Brian Reade delivers Trump’ speech as he imagines it. People are “subjects of the Trump organisation”. But didn’t we all buy into Obama’s world, the man whose identity was key to his success? When Trayvon Martin was killed by a white Hispanic vigilante in 2012, Trump opined: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”

So how do you follow that? What is Obama’s legacy? Is it Donald Trump? “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America: there’s the United States of America,” said Obama in 2004. Now what do you see in a country where ‘white man’ has become an insult more than an observation?

Once all eyes were on Obama the man not the party activist, a politico branded ‘The One’, by Oprah Winfrey; now they are on Trump and his identity.

Former BBC staffer Paul Mason is making some sort of point about Sports Direct and Newcastle United FC tycoon Mike Ashley and his underlings:

What is striking, when you consider the modern reality of precarious work and coercive management, is how the concept of human rights stops at the factory gate.

Human rights?

The workers of Georgian England had no democratic rights or access to law. But the 21st century is supposed to be an age of universal rights. Every one of the practices described at Sports Direct appears to not just have broken employment law, but also violated the human right of the citizen not to be bullied, shamed, endangered or sexually harassed.

So things are better now because there are laws and human rights. Sports Direct’s working practises can be tested in a court of law. The workers have redress. Things are much improved. So what exactly is Mason’s point?

A review of David Astor: A Life in Print, a biography of the former editor of the Observer, contained a number of errors (20 February, page 7, Review).

In the article we suggested that William Waldorf Astor was named after a hotel, when in fact his name referred to the family’s native Rhineland village.

He didn’t build Cliveden, as we suggested, but bought it, and he didn’t sack the editor of the Observer for spiking his contributions (although he did sack the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, another Astor acquisition, for spiking his contributions).

We said Katharine Whitehorn was women’s editor of the Observer when in fact she was a columnist.

We said Patrick Leigh Fermor compared David Astor to Disney’s Pluto; Fermor actually compared the writer Philip Toynbee to that cartoon character.

YOU may have missed it, because she’s so tragically dull, but Lana Del Rey recently said she was tired of living and basically glamorised singers who had died too young.

She said these words in the Guardian, which she then refuted by saying she was lead-on. The Guardian then published the audio of the conversation, which shows she wasn’t.

And that’s the long and the short of it.

However, saying you want to die; that’s catnip to anyone with a passing interest in outrage. A series of op-eds have appeared and everyone is tying themselves in knots. The real winners are Lana Del Rey’s publicity drive for her new album and The Guardian, who find themselves in a minor ‘NME/Richie Edwards/4REAL‘ scenario.

NOW here’s a thing. The Scott Trust Limited, which owns the Guardian Media Group, which in turn owns The Guardian, is just about to make a vast profit. And it will pay no tax at all on that vast profit.

Which is interesting, don’t you think, given that newspaper’s constant refrain that big business is ripping us all off by not paying taxes?

Britain’s Daily Mail Group has announced it will launch an Australian version of its site with the goal of becoming this country’s leading news website. Daily Mail Australia will launch early next year and hire 50 local journalists, with an editor to be appointed in the next few weeks.

You might not like the Mail, but it makes money and employing local reporters is a sound move. They’re not the first UK organ to head to Oz. The Guardian has opened their version.

“We are going very nakedly for a scale play,” he said … He dismissed comparisons with British rival Guardian Australia, which launched here six months ago. “I’m not hugely familiar with what they do in Australia,” he said. “We won’t be copying their model.”

THERE are times when the Guardian manages to out-Guardian even itself. The last time was over the idea that the meerkat adverts are in fact racist: something which even the readers of the paper didn’t think was a likely result. Today’s example comes in a column about an ad that Marco Pierre White did for Knorr. Basically making Jamaican chicken with peas and rice by adding a couple of stock cubes to some rice, chicken and peas.

OK, it’s a pretty dreadful version of the dish but still, this is the final verdict from The G on why this is so appalling:

Beneath the tears of laughter at the hilarity of the video was the palpable and justified anger at an attempt to disregard the expertise behind Jamaican cooking. The community’s outrage at the hot mess cobbled together by MPW as “Jamaican-style” is however not just about the misrepresentation of their culinary skills. The evident lack of respect, mingled with an intention to create a marketable product was another example of cultural appropriation for wider consumption.

A quite wonderful piece of failure here by The Guardian on the subject of Google’s taxes today.

They’ve noticed that Google doesn’t pay very much tax in the UK. OK, fine, but the figures that they then use to illustrate this show that Google might well be paying too much in tax in the UK. No, really:

Google paid just £11.6m in UK corporation tax last year, despite revenues of £506m and a £36.8m profit, according to documents filed at Companies House.

THE Guardian’s been lambasting any and every one who doesn’t pay the amount of tax that they think they should. But of course, we find there is hypocrisy there:

The events and magazines company Top Right Group ran up a corporation tax bill of just £200,000 despite making a pre-tax profit of £186.2m last year.

Top Right, owned by Guardian Media Group and Apax Partners, landed a huge one-off windfall of £166.1m after selling its motoring research arm, CAP. Its chief financial officer, Mandy Gradden, told The Independent the profits on the sale were “exempt from tax under the substantial shareholding exemption which is available to every company in the UK”.

AS you may or may not know The Guardian has just started up an online section devoted to Australia. And it’s terribly comforting to know that even on the other side of the world the lefties are subject to the same damn delusions as they are here. For example, we’ve got a complaint about how the Sony PS 4 is going to be more expensive in Oz that it is in other countries:

All that, and it cost $100 USD less, too, coming in at $399. It seemed like Sony could do no wrong. But for all this fanfare and literal standing ovation, there’s a problem for Australian gamers. The PS4 is set to retail at a tooth-grindingly expensive $549 because of… reasons? That’s too much. I’ve checked. You can too. Sony haven’t explained their unique pricing structure yet, but it seems like a fairly arbitrary dollop of Australian tax.

THE new editor of Newsnight, the BBC news show that spiked the Jimmy Savile expose, is the Guardian’s Ian Katz. Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman said in the wake of the Savile debacle that BBC’s news division had been “taken over by radio … Helen Boaden, a radio person. Steve Mitchell, a radio person. Peter Rippon was a radio person. These people belong to a different kind of culture.”

Fair, balanced and impartial Ian Katz will have no trouble fitting in at his new role as Newsnight editor … Katz certainly has top drawer left-wing credentials. Back in 2004, he was editor of the Guardian’s G2 magazine during their infamous ‘Operation Clark County’ plot to swing the state of Ohio in favour of John Kerry and against George W. Bush. Katz organised thousands of letters written by lefty Britons to be sent to individual voters in Ohio, imploring them to cast their ballot for Kerry. The result was uproar, a near diplomatic incident, and victory for Bush.

EVER read the comments pages at the Guardian? Tom Forth does. And he’s here to help with his automated Guardian comment generator. The gap between fact and parody is very small. If you doubt it, read our Ed’s From the Message Boards in Private Eye magazine.